A COUPLE of days before Nawaz Sharif was forced to step down as prime minister of Pakistan, his most vehement critic, Imran Khan, a former cricket star turned politician, asserted to The Economist that Mr Sharif had spent his life rigging the system. Hell, Mr Khan complained, when they used to play cricket together as young men in Lahore, at the Gymkhana Club, Mr Sharif somehow made sure that the umpire cried foul any time he appeared to have been bowled out.
Given Mr Sharif’s reputation for canniness, it is a mystery why, following the publication in 2016 of papers leaked from a Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca, he went into bat so nonchalantly to save his own political career. The leak ended up bringing him down and threatens the survival of his political dynasty. The papers suggested that Mr Sharif’s children had amassed valuable assets abroad, including four apartments in an expensive area of London, that seemed unaffordable given his stated...Continue reading
from Asia http://ift.tt/2v2EzUe
EmoticonEmoticon